I am always very grateful for all the great work that Terry O’Neil and Beth Scott do at KSM to provide veterinarians with sound and reasonable advice. They just released this summary of Q1, and I want to touch on a few things that Terry and Beth mentioned in this article.
In turbulent times, it is very easy to become obsessed with the numbers. This happened to me in 2008. As a newer practice owner, I became so aware of our numbers and my business that I forgot some basic things as I started to focus on the numbers. Terry calls this out in his summary by saying, “we cannot overreact or underreact to performance. One quarter does not define a business’s success but must be monitored to possibly identify what the root cause is and what may be done to improve.” No truer words have been said. If you fall into the trap of reacting to your numbers in a short time frame, you are very likely to make the wrong decision.
Veterinary medicine is a slow-moving beast, and so is practice. Because the cycle of routine care is a year, trends may or may not show up for a long time. If you look at your numbers weekly or even daily, as I fell into the habit, it can lead you to many wrong turns.
Your numbers should be like lab work. They help you prove or disprove what you know is happening at your hospital. When you start from the notion that, as owners, we must be objective about what is good in our practice and what is bad, then numbers will help you prove if a decision you made in correcting an issue is working. So, do not start with the numbers; instead, start with your practice and your goals and use the numbers to prove what is occurring.
For example, our goal (because we are veterinarians) should be to take care of as many animals and their owners as possible to the best of our ability. When we start with that basic statement, how we run our practice will follow. Personally, I wanted to ensure that we provided quality care while respecting our owners’ time. So our focus became giving our doctors the most amount of time in the rooms that they needed. That led to how do we cut down on forms, check-in, check-out, history taking, and other items to make that happen. We spent a tremendous amount of time refining, changing, and improving all of our systems to maximize the time the client spent in the room with the veterinarian.
So, I would use our customer surveys and numbers to see if we succeeded in our goal. I expected our surveys to show high client satisfaction because our doctors spent time with them. I expected to see things like “they answered all my questions” and “they really took time to listen to me.” I also hoped they would say we saw them on time, never made them feel rushed, but respected their time. From the numbers, I expect our doctor revenue to be high. When doctors have time to explain items, we see better compliance. My staff costs might be slightly higher than those of others because trained people are needed to be efficient. When we hired staff, it took us longer to get them trained, so I knew that in the short term, my staff costs might be a little higher, but later, as they become more efficient and knowledgeable of our system, I could hire fewer people. I also expected our client numbers to grow as word of mouth spread about how kind and efficient we were.
If the numbers were not changing as I expected, I would objectively look to see if we were achieving our goals. If not, then the process would be refined, I would identify gaps, get input from the staff on how to improve. Once that happened, we would give it time and recheck the numbers.
Terry, Beth, and KSM do a fantastic job giving us all the information. I also find the personal consults incredibly beneficial as they are more objective than I can sometimes be about what is working in my hospital and what is not. They will discuss one metric and make me drill down to the goal and process associated with that metric. They never look at those metrics in isolation. They also understood that it might take me six months to have all the steps and processes to start moving a particular metric.
So, I like numbers—probably too much—but remember that the numbers are not what drives the business. What drives your business should be your unique take on taking care of pets and their owners. The numbers give you a score on how effective you are at achieving your goals.
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